The new incarnation of Virgin Australia has continued its previous tradition of offering a very special lounge to its most prestigious guests. Today saw the curtain lift on the airline’s long-awaited invitation-only private ‘Beyond Lounges’ in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, reserved for corporate partners, some high-status Velocity Frequent Flyer members and key opinion leaders throughout…
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It’s been a pretty big day for Australia, with international borders opened, Qantas starting the relaunch of its international network and also the day domestically Victoria-New South Wales borders have re-opened. To celebrate, rival Virgin Australia has given us a look at what its refurbished Melbourne Lounge will look like and unveiled a new and…
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The aviation landscape in Australia may have shifted quite dramatically over the past few months, with new regional entrant Rex looking to take on Qantas on the main Melbourne – Sydney shuttle route and Virgin Australia re-emerging as a mid market carrier, and there’s even talk that Qantas isn’t taking project Sunrise off the table…
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No1 Lounges seems to be getting deeper and deeper in to bed with airlines across the world, and has just launched its latest airport lounge partnership with Virgin Australia at Brisbane Airport’s International Terminal. This follows the opening of The House at Sydney and Melbourne in 2018 and their pre-existing partnership with Etihad. The new lounge…
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Hot off the heels of their A330 refresh, Virgin Australia today unveiled its new International Business Class cabin, with the first of its refitted Boeing 777-300ER aircraft now flying across the Pacific. This comes after their announcement of the refresh back in 2014. “The airline’s flagship Business Class product ‘The Business’, new Business Class Bar…
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2015 has been an impressive year with many carriers taking advantage of the lowered oil prices to invest heavily into their passenger experience both on the ground and in the air. We take a look at the best carriers around the world that have caught our attention this year. We offer a retrospective of the…
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Virgin Australia have released some very basic images of a new premium economy seat product which will be unveiled on their 777 later on this year. Whist the actual hard product is still under wraps, the actual statistics are what are a little more interesting. The airline has increased its seat pitch to a generous…
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This month we celebrate all things fashion. Our Top 10 airline uniforms for 2015 are a real feast for the eyes. This is one category where product from 40 years ago is still pitched against the very latest products on the market, and some of these products really do stand the test of time. We…
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Although we announced the introduction of this seat almost a year ago today, the final touches have finally been completed and the newest business class seating was showcased today to the media. The Thomson Vantage XL seat has been fully customised to offer Qantas passengers the very best in comfort and technology. In a world…
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Our TheDesignAir Top 10 lists have undergone a revamp in 2014, and to aid transparency, our top 10 airlines will now have their rating out of 100 shown, as voted for and calculated by our judging panel. This month we cover our top 10 premium economy classes. With airlines investing more into their new mid-cabin classes, competition is…
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Our TheDesignAir Top 10 lists have undergone a revamp in 2014, and to aid transparency, our top 10 airlines will now have their rating out of 100 shown, as voted for and calculated by our judging panel. What is interesting for our Top 10 International business classes 2014 is the wide ranging percentage scores within the top…
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We haven’t covered much on Virgin Australia recently. Our bad. However, we couldn’t help but fall in love with their new Melbourne Lounge that has been open a little over a week. Taking 6 months to renovate the previous lounge space, they have managed to double the size and give the whole venue a slick,…
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Air Canada has announced an amazing 458 seat configuration 77w coming on the line in July this year, including a new premium economy product, something we announced back in May last year. The airline has really stepped up their offering (thankfully), providing a European style cabin to compete with the slightly inferior north American counterparts. We…
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Next year will see the demise of the almost 19 hour flight that connects Singapore to Newark, New York as flown by Singapore Airlines A340-500 series aircraft. It’s not that the route isn’t doing well, it’s because Singapore are trading in their ageing models to be used against the purchase of 5 new A380’s and…
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Now I have a feeling this is going to be a “Marmite/Vegimite” of liveries. You are either going to love it, or hate it. But Fiji Airways rebranding gets a big thumbs up from TheDesignAir. When first mentioned on TheDesignAir we highlighted the fact that Fiji was going back to it’s roots with it’s new name.…
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As promised, here at DesignAir we evaluated airlines around the world to compile our definitive Top 10 list of Cool Airline Brands. Let us know if you agree, whether you think we’ve missed one, or what your top 10 would be at the bottom of the page! 10. Southwest Southwest Airlines could be seen as a…
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Streuth! It’s hard not to report about the Virgin group of airlines right now, as they just keep on doing things right. We, here at TheDesignAir love this brand new commercial from Virgin Australia. Turn up your speakers, sit back and enjoy! Slick, clean, and super retro, they are really trying to hark back to the…
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There has been a bit of excitement running through the net recently of Apple’s impending iPhone launch, and with it, iOS 6, the new operating system, hosting a plethora of nifty new now-must-have-apps. The most important, and perhaps exciting to hit the airline industry is Passbook. Passbook seems to be a relatively nifty idea, sorting…
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So, for those of you who have been following my posts will probably be expecting this report. It’s safe to say I’ve been confident that a ‘Virgin America’ product would end up over in Europe, recently covering such a concept in this Report. Virgin Atlantic have launched a 3 times daily return connection between Heathrow…
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Whilst those of you that have seen Air Pacific planes might be a little confused by this press release issued by the airline (due to the fact the airline’s livery has a huge ‘Fiji’ written on the tailfin), the old airline is being reborn. Fiji Airways (Air Pacific’s original name) will become the brand name…
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Virgin Australia have been busy recently and have just released images of their new domestic A330 fleet operating both the Syndey-Perth and Melbourne-Perth routes. This comes just over a week after releasing news of them updating the interiors of their 777 cabins for their trans-pacific flights. As designed by Brand Director, Hans Hulsbosch, Virgin Australia has…
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Virgin Australia have been trying to bring all their historic sub brands into line, and this latest development in their fleet has brought the Old V Australia brand into line with the rest of their fleet. A new leaf motif has been injected into the cabin, through the seats and carpet, and has been led…
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